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A week in the life of a particle accelerator designer
“So, what do you do?” I’m sure you have an answer that tends to pop out your mouth. My answer-du-jour is “I design particle accelerators”. I have it on some authority that my job is officially cooler...
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Striking a balance between science and communication
Since this is meant to be the first of many regular blog posts I have promised to write for physicsfocus, I thought I would begin by saying something about how one finds the time to do such things. I...
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Are flaws in peer review someone else’s problem?
That stack of fellowship applications piled up on the coffee table isn’t going to review itself. You’ve got twenty-five to read before the rapidly approaching deadline, and you knew before you...
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“What do you do?”
Physics has always been my vocation. Perhaps it’s because my dad is an engineer, so my earliest memories are of soldering irons, microscopes and torque gauges. For whatever reason, I have always cared...
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physicsfocus: Our first week in review
physicsfocus is a week and a half old! We hope by now you’ve had chance to settle in and get acquainted with our nine regular contributors. If not, here’s your chance to catch up with all of our...
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Not everything that counts can be counted
My first post for physicsfocus described a number of frustrating deficiencies in the peer review system, focusing in particular on how we can ensure, via post-publication peer review, that science does...
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The English Patient
I’m writing this post from Room 7 of the paediatric emergency ward of l’Hopitale Sud in Rennes, France. It’s my fifth day spent in the room, distantly separated from my holiday luggage. It might seem...
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Would Ruby Payne Scott have got further in her career today?
These days, when we talk about equality for women in physics and science in general, the subject of subtle, unconscious gender bias is a hot topic. But in the middle of the last century, gender bias...
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How journalists can help the scientists they interview
As a physicist, I’m fond of simple universal principles from which all other results are derived. When a journalist is interviewing a scientist for a story, I think the important underlying idea is...
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Compliments, sexism and careers in science
Imagine this situation: you’ve been invited to a school to talk about science. By chance, you and your helper are both female. You give your presentation, doing your best to portray the wonder and...
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Selling science by the pound
The President of the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada, John McDougall, caused quite a blogstorm, and set Twitter alight, at the end of last month when he said: “Scientific discovery is not...
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Why physicists need to get on Twitter
Physicists, are you on Twitter? If not, it might not just be you missing out. The case for scientists to join the community of 200 million active Twitter users is strong. By tweeting, you can...
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The numbers game: where are the women?
This year’s Institute of Physics (IOP) awards were announced a couple of days ago, a list of impressive individuals who have shown mastery of their subject. Heading the list was the Isaac Newton Medal...
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Can we do more to help academic parents?
The youngest attendee at a conference on the ‘Regulation of Star Formation in Molecular Gas’ this June was Tomas, the one year old son of Annie Hughes, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck...
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When you tell someone you’re a physicist, explain what you actually do
Physics is a diverse, constantly growing field. So why do people treat me differently when I tell them that I’m studying it? The response is almost always that they never understood (or worse, never...
View Article#sciconfessions: Our bloggers spill their darkest secrets
Over the last few days, scientists have been telling all on Twitter. Failed experiments, stupid mistakes, accidental E. coli poisoning… you name it, someone has admitted to it. See the latest...
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Why scientists need software engineers
I build telescopes. This is what I tell people, if they should show the slightest interest. It usually instils just enough awe and sometimes a little jealousy; astronomy is the vocational equivalent...
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Perform or perish? Guilty confessions of a YouTube physicist
This week is YouTube’s Geek Week so it seems a particularly (in)opportune moment to come clean about some niggling doubts I’ve been having of late about physics education/edutainment on the web....
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We should all be aware of our unconscious biases
As scientists we believe we are rather good at weighing up the evidence and forming judgments appropriately. That is what we are trained to do and we would be horrified if we were accused of making...
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For better learning, harness the power of play
Christmas, 1965, and an 11-year-old boy eagerly rips open the paper from a large parcel he’d been eying under the tree for what seemed like most of the Advent period. Too small to be a Scalextric, too...
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